I didn’t make eye contact because I know the rules. The other individual obviously didn’t and proceeded to have a conversation with us as he stood there naked with one leg up on the bench. And that is all I have to say about that.

It occurred to me that my experience wasn’t as delightful as it could have been that day. Likely because others neglected to follow the unwritten rules of the locker room. It made sense since most people are unaware of these commandments. When we initially joined the gym, they never provided rules of locker room conduct. So I took it upon myself to draft an important few in the hopes that they could be built upon. Maybe even printed out and hung up. So here goes.

7 officially, unofficial rules of every men’s locker room. Follow with care.

• No sight seeing. Unless you are looking for locker, your workout friend or your lost child, your eyes should remain in a fixed position that will get you from point A to point B. This is not a museum even though you may find the occasional ancient, artifact walking around.
• When naked, limit direct eye contact with strangers. It’s not nice to stare people down when you are clothed. It’s extra creepy when you are not. And borderline illegal when it is aimed at younger children.
• Do not elevate legs more then 10 degrees. Keep your feet on the ground. Or damn close to it. Stretching should be done before or after workouts inside the gym. There is absolutely no need to lift your leg and show the room your danglers. Side note: Elevating leg above 10 degrees and direct eye contact for extended periods of time is grounds for caning.
• No food. Unless you have a fetish for eating sandwiches off of toilet seats, snacks should remain outside.
• Respect the 12″ safety radius. It gets crowded. People bring in racquetball racquets. Others are bending down to get their gym bags. Prevent an accident.
• Sox / shoes are not to be worn alone. Shorts and pants are their natural companions. They need to be worn together.
• Blow dryers are for your head. That is all.
• No snapping towels. No!

A couple months ago, a team (Kikki Tham Sterner, Johan Ollas, Per Lindgren and Joakim Svarling according to their site) created the iSense concept as their contribution to the Future Lions Competition 2011. It was a braille concept for iPad. The premise centered around having a light-responsive material cover that reacted to the content on the screen and transformed the cover into a tactile surface that could be used by visually impaired individuals. Quite an amazing, useful concept.

Why couldn’t this idea become a reality now rather then later? There have been significant advances in surface technology. Consider this example. What if the screen became tactile and the screen surface itself had texture that replicated the environment you see. For instance, imagine the screen background was wooden boards and as you ran your fingers across the screen you can actually feel the edges of where the boards meet. Sound unreal? It’s actually not.

Senseg,”a leading innovator and provider of feasible and scalable haptic user experiences” headquartered in Finland has made this a reality. With their patent-pending E-Sense technology, they’ve created highly sophisticated touch experiences. For example, this technology has made it possible to feel the edges of a touch-screen key pad. So a user no longer has to rely on visual cues to know that they have pressed a key. They can feel it depress. This technology is also currently being applied to slider controls, rotating controls and web page links.

Toshiba has already picked up this technology last year and is expected to release commercial products like e-readers, notebooks and mobile devices in 2011.

So I guess the big question – can Senseg’s technology possibly bring the iSense (or something like it) to life?

Entrepreneurs Danny Potter and Noel Hunwick conceived and created the E-Table™ with the belief that this interactive ordering system can provide improved efficiency in dealing with customers, with the potential to reduce staff costs, turnaround covers faster, and increase customer spend.

Certainly an impressive, engaging customer experience.

Even today, I still recall having the same conversation with my own father. It feels like it was yesterday. He was getting ready for work as I wondered into his room. The leather box on top of his dresser that I have seen a million times before had caught my eye. It was black with two doors that opened in opposite directions. Inside were rings of his father and silver dollars. I asked if Santa was real.

The point of bringing it up is not so much about delivering the answer. It’s about the minds ability to ignite an emotional, human response from a story. And what that is. Research indicates that we all organize knowledge by storytelling. And, as a tool in the classroom, storytelling is vital to promoting student growth. It is how we learned as children. Yet in the world of communications and user experience, this foundational method of engaging is often forgotten or lost in the wake of business goals and feature demands. And products end up in the sea of sameness.

So, why does storytelling make sense in developing user experiences for products? Cindy Chastain, Creative Director, Experience at RAPP summarizes it as a means to give the product purpose and to focus and define what you are building. She refers to this as “the core value of the experience” or “experience theme”.

(Learn more about Experience Themes in Cindy’s article on Boxes and Arrows.)

I would go on further to say that through storytelling; we are creating a reason to believe. And having worked with diverse, multi-disciplined teams, that is not always easy to do. But, vital to providing consistency at every point of contact. Sounds a little like branding doesn’t it? The reality is that there is inter-connectivity.

So how do we approach projects with storytelling in mind? Begin with an experience goal. Ask questions. Explore. Discover. For you process junkies, try to better understand the narrative structure. There are a ton of great resources out there. Some of which I have listed below.

Look to filmmaking. To describe a story in film, one needs to answer:

• Where is the story set?
• What event starts the story?
• Who are the main characters?
• What conflicts do they face? What is at stake?
• What happens to the characters as they face this conflict?
• What is the outcome of this conflict
• What is the ultimate impact on the characters?

(Source: [InPoint] Home: Welcome to InPoint, the Online Production Resource Centre at Pacific Cinémathèque. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.inpoint.org>.

One can draw parallels between the questions asked in the filmmaking world and those created in the UX world. There is a reason for that. Both are created to charge a human response. Sounds a lot like a discovery process yes? Kind of. The difference is that asking questions in this context arrives at answers that are more meaningful, emotional and interpersonal. That is the sweet spot. Your user goals shape into experience goals. And you can begin to approach experiences more holistically. This is definitely not a one-size fits all approach however, you can begin to see how it can fit nicely into existing user-centered approaches and underpin a brand story.

There is an even more powerful application of storytelling in UX. And that exists in how we present our work to our partners (clients). Instead of going into meetings and touting how we are going to solve problems with our ideas, challenge yourself to deliver a story of how their customers will be compelled to use their product over and over again as they BELIEVE it was the best experience. Because it was.

So does storytelling work? I began this post with a little piece about my daughter and myself. What amazed me is that my wife answered virtually the same way as my father did more then 30+ years earlier. And it was all about believing.

Best described in the closing line in one of my favorite holiday movies/stories – The Polar Express.

Here are some great storytelling resources:

Smashing Magazine

“Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One”
“Better User Experience With Storytelling, Part 2″

Screenwriting, filmmaking, etc books:

The Disciplines of User Experience
Story
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Emotional Design
Lovemarks

Presentations:

Dorelle Rabinowitz
Storytelling – A Compelling Design Tool

Cindy Chastain

Experience Themes: An Element of Story Applied to Design
Thinking Like a Storyteller
“Experience Themes”

Storyteller Evangelists:

Cindy Chastain – @cchastain
Christian Saylor – @christiansaylor
Dorelle Rabinowitz – @dorelvis

References:

“Experience Themes.” Boxes and Arrows: The Design behind the Design. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/experience-themes>.

“Better User Experience With Storytelling – Part One.” Smashing Magazine. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/29/better-user-experience-using-storytelling-part-one/>.

“Better User Experience With Storytelling, Part 2.” Smashing Magazine. Web. 02 Nov. 2010. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/02/11/better-user-experience-through-storytelling-part-2/>.

Let’s not forget those of us that like to prototype in Omnigraffle. A pretty sizable collection of Facebook related elements to use in creating wireframes for Facebook applications.

Some of the elements are a little older but a good springboard. Know that if you are designing tabs, the size will be changing sometime in 2010. Here is the roadmap:

Application tab roadmap: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roadmap_Profile

Facebook styles: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Facebook_Styles

Facebook GUI (.psd): http://surgeworks.com/blog/design/facebook-gui-free-psd-resource

Facebook Application (Omnigraffle): http://www.graffletopia.com/stencils/410